Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge)
Dmitri Popov
explains some Thunderbird mail client tricks in a NewsForge article.
"Even if you use Thunderbird on a daily basis, you probably don't know it inside out. There are still quite a few 'hidden' features not covered in the online help that can significantly improve your emailing habits. And since Thunderbird's functionality can be expanded via extensions, you can add some clever features to it too."
(Log in to post comments)
Smart Folders don't work on IMAP for mailing lists Posted Apr 20, 2006 17:01 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I would dump Evolution for Thunderbird in no time if Smart Folders (a.k.a. Saved Searches) actually worked for mailing list posts located on IMAP servers. Last time I tried Thunderbird 1.5 it didn't work. I actually saw a bug on Thunderbird Bugzilla that calls for removing the mailing list filtering from the GUI for the folders served via IMAP (it was claimed to be impossible to implement).
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 20, 2006 17:03 UTC (Thu) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] Is there a hidden option in there somewhere to get it to understand that email is text?
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 20, 2006 18:28 UTC (Thu) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] I have no idea what you are talking about. What do you mean?
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 20, 2006 20:22 UTC (Thu) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] I mean I don't want my email program parsing HTML codes.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 0:05 UTC (Fri) by avik (subscriber, #704) [Link] And you read LWN using telnet to port 80?If HTML mail is sent, it has to be parsed. Text email is nice for sending patches around, but email is used for more than kernel development, and by people who like their email to be laid out nicely and contain images and such.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 1:52 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] No, I read LWN using a web browser.
LWN is a web page, and web pages are supposed to contain HTML.
Email is not, and should not.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 22, 2006 2:14 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Email is not, and should not. Sorry to disappoint you, but HTML mail was standartized long time ago (RFC 2110, etc). It's not some proprietary invention - it's international standard. Today any mail client without ability to show HTML at least in some form can be safely considered broken. Creation of HTML mail is optional feature in today's world, reading is not (even old clients like PINE are supporting it in one form or another). Like MIME support, for example - ancient clients do not support MIME, but it'll be quite surprising to see modern client without such support. So... Sorry, if you want broken client - Thunderbird is not such client and [hopefully] will never be.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 24, 2006 5:38 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Including HTML can also render emails unreadable!
My mail client does not display HTML. It's designed for use when there is no internet connection available.
And about the only use for HTML I normally come across is all those images in spam and/or commercial email that I don't want to see.
At the end of the day, email is text. That's what I want to see, that's what I need to see, and anything else is in all probability either a nuisance, a bandwidth hog, or a security liability.
By saying "email clients should display html", you are going down the MS route of saying "software should be easy-to-use, who cares what the consequences are" - and you know where THAT's got us!!!
Cheers,
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 4:12 UTC (Fri) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] What sort of snotty answer is that?
There are good reasons to want to turn off HTML in emails:
Privacy - by embedding pictures (which don't have to more than 1x1 pixels) a sender can keep track of which mails have actually reached a target. This can also be used to beef up visitor numbers on websites.
Security - there have been several security issues in the past with displaying pictures.
On top of that, why should people be forced to look at what some idiot thinks is incredibly cool or good looking, as well as waste bandwidth on downloading any number of pictures, animations, sound files etc?
Fortunately thunderbird does indeed allow you to get rid of what some people think is incredibly cool. Go into View -> Message Body As -> Plain Text. I think it still interprets HTML 'a little bit', but it seems to be limited to what is necessary in order to extract the text.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 12:53 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] You mention a few reasons, there are many, many more, but we can generalise them all by saying it's prophylactic against stupidity.
The only HTML mail I ever get is spam. Period.
No one who knows me would ever be so stupid as to send that. If they want to send a web page, they can send a url. If it's a work in progress that's not available via http right now (comes up quite a bit, I help folks with web pages often) they can attach an html file to the message, so I can save it and open it with browser and editor.
Under no circumstances whatsoever is the use of HTML in the body of an email message acceptable. If formatting is required (why?), it should be compliant with RFC1896, or else encoded as an attachment, with the body of the message explaining why I should take the time to look at it _in text_.
While I can certainly understand the line of thought that leads to Thunderbird handling it like this, I reject it. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Thunderbirds 'solution' is to give in to the problem and paper over it in mute acquiescence. It's like accepting .doc files. OK, I do actually have the capability to read them for the moment, but that's not the point. They are not an appropriate format, and the appropriate response on receiving one is not to silently go about converting to a standard format and leave the sender in ignorance. How will they know anything is wrong of they are never told?
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 22, 2006 2:38 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Thunderbirds 'solution' is to give in to the problem and paper over it in mute acquiescence Huh. You are losing me. There are few international standards Thunderbird is implementing. RFC 2110 is among them. Since when support for IETF standards is considered to be "a problem" ? Abuse of HTML mail is a problem, sure. But support for HTML mail ? Never. It's old standard (over 8 years old) so people who are sending mail to you will expect for it to be supported by your mailer. Noone will ask. Noone should ask! Long time ago mail was "plain text only": no files, not HTML. Then MIME was invented (RFC 1521, RFC 1522; standard from 1993). Later HTML mail was invented (RFC 2110 + few W3C ones; standard from 1997). If you think RFC 1521/1522 (and successors) must be supported but RFC 2110 must be ignored then I want some explanation: both are international standards, both were never included in original e-mail definition, both are expected to be supported by modern browsers and both can be abused and can open security holes if implementation is poorly done yet you insist that RFC 2110 support must be optional and RFC 1521/1522 (and successors) must be supported unconditionally. Why ? Once you'll be able to answer this simple question you'll be able to claim that you've found "the problem" Thunderbird is refusing to combat. Till then we can safely assume Thunderbird is doing the right thing, and you are trying to create problems for others just to satisfy your ego. Sorry but it's easier for me to send HTML-mail then plain-text - and this is enough reason: it's old standard, it must be supported, period. Just like it's easier to me to use MIME and not uuencode - thus I'm not trying to explain why I've sent something as attachment and not as uuencoded blob in mail body. If your client is broken then I can send you plain text mail and uuencoded file - but why should I assume you are still using broken client in 2006 ?
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 22, 2006 11:56 UTC (Sat) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] RFC 2110, as you point out, dates to 1997. By this time some popular commercial email programs had unilaterally decided to implement HTML in email, ignoring the standards existing at the time, and flooding the internet with this crap. It was an attempt at damage control. And, as well, one of the filers in this case was an employee of the worst offendor in this regard, so it was also an attempt to label what they were determined to force on us as a 'standard' after the fact. Sort of like the current attempt to get a standard imprimatur on the new document format they've designed. HTML was never designed for this use, and is wholly unsuited to it. Adding it to email bodies adds nothing of substance other than problems. That's my opinion on the matter. You're entitled to yours. If you want software that parses this in your email, fine. I don't, however, and I certainly have as much right to my opinion as you do to yours. When I get an email full of bad, auto-generated HTML codes I'd rather see them for what they are rather than having my client software try to fool me into seeing it as a proper message. Sorry but it's easier for me to send HTML-mail then plain-text Why? Because your software does this by default? Why on earth would you want that? At *BEST* it bloats your bit count by something around 5-10 times and adds _nothing_ of value to it. I'm guessing it's been a long time since you had to use a dialup link to download your mail, or since you've had worries about your disk space running out. That's great for you. It's not so great if you ever need to communicate with someone who does have those worries. Needlessly bloating and complicating your message in ways that add no substance will be perceived by anyone in that situation, or by anyone simply conscious of the fact that others on the net are in that situation, as disrespectful and thoughtless, at best. MIME is not at all analogous to this, btw, as MIME added real functionality - not merely distractions and opportunities for mischief. To be respectful to your correspondents, you should be aware it's possible their reader won't support it, but that's the only issue. With HTML in emails, that's just the beginning of the issues.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 0:05 UTC (Fri) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] This might help:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_%28Thunderbir...
Although not exactly want you want.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 1:49 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] Thanks, and you're right, it doesn't do exactly what I want, but it does confirm that Thunderbird is simply incapable of delivering it. Saves me the time and trouble of trying out the new version only to find it's just as broken as I remember.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 27, 2006 10:14 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link] You might also try setting mailnews.display.html_as to 1 -- I'm not sure if that's any different, but I found it at http://nightlybuild.at.infoseek.co.jp/help/tips.html by googling. The only HTML mail I seem to have has a plain text alternate, so I have no idea how it behaves on HTML-only email.
Is there a hidden option ... to understand that email is text? Posted Apr 27, 2006 8:05 UTC (Thu) by robdinn (guest, #30753) [Link] With reference to Thunderbird 1.0.8
For reading mail I find it useful to have menu item
Then if I want to look at the HTML markup I hit CTRL-U to view the
On the other hand, if you mean is there a way make sure
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 1:11 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] There are quite a few incredible stupidities, for example:
* Mangle whitespace by default, for no apparent benefit
* From field (and others) in mail not cut and pastable
* Copy link on address field doesn't include the addressee's name
* If you have a text selection set, sort-by (threaded) doesn't work
* Wierdo file save dialog doesn't let you type in a path
* Attachments really hard to spot, entirely nonobvious that they have context menues
It goes on and on. I sometimes wonder if the core developers have ever used a gui mail program before, are they just discovering the wonders of point and click for the first time? Hint: try Eudora. Try Kmail. Try Mac mailers, even Outlook for crying out loud.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 21, 2006 2:25 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] Oh yes,
* Insists on adding .eml extension to the name of any mail I save. This isn't shown in the save dialog and there is apparently nothing I can do to override it.
Weirdo file save dialog Posted Apr 21, 2006 6:22 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I hate that dialog too, but you can't really blame Thunderbird for that one. It's the fault of the GNOME developers, who have to be the most arrogant, annoying bunch of know-it-alls on the planet.
Anyway, you can type in a path by hitting Control-L. The beauty of the "new and improved" GNOME file dialog is that it's far more annoying than the old one, and also much slower. Yay, progress...
Weirdo file save dialog Posted Apr 21, 2006 12:37 UTC (Fri) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] It's also the fault of the mozilla.org developers who've tied their code to GTK2, with all of its GNOME inspired brain damage.
Use Thunderbird like a pro (NewsForge) Posted Apr 23, 2006 9:18 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] Mail clients are, even more than most things, a matter of personal opinion. Thunderbird is what I use personally, although I have used Evolution and KMail as my primary email clients in the not so distant past. I like Thunderbird's interface and features. It seems clean. Evolution always seems just a little bit shaky, a little too heavyweight, has a bit of a cluttered interface, and gives me contacts and calendar and... when I really just want a mail client. KMail is a joke. Particularly if you use IMAP and it is the one piece of KDE that never seems to evolve.
I can't comment from personal experience upon Eudora since it doesn't have a Linux version. I have converted a few Windows users from Eudora to Thunderbird and they have all said they like it better, however.
BTW, I like the Gnome file dialog. (Kudo's to Thunderbird for integrating so well with multiple platforms.) Don't bother with CTRL-L, though. Just start typing your path. You'll even get an autocomplete dropdown which you can either use or ignore as you choose.
So there you have *my* opinion on popular Linux mail clients.
|
|||||||||||